- 1 - Aesthetic Experience of Urban Agricultural Landscape in Post-Industrial Seoul Draft 2018/09/12 Myungjin Shin 1 , Jeong-Hann Pae, Ph.D 2 Abstract Urban agricultural landscape is a cultural field where pastoral ideal and social phenomenon such as environmental movements of the 20 th Century co-exist in a complex mixture. For a newly developed city such as Seoul, a city boasting a different type of gardening culture, one that is more agricultural than gardening, the need for aesthetic understanding of the urban agricultural landscape is even more significant, as this offers a different mode of landscape interpretations. Thus, this study focuses on the viewers’ aesthetic experience to explore alternative ways to understand the contemporary urban agricultural landscape by adapting theories from art and aesthetics – in particular, theories of environmental aesthetics and site-specific land art and environmental art. Interpretive framework presented in this study inquires one to form interconnected links along the concepts of aesthetic experience, cultural sustainability and the moral responsibility in our everyday lives. The framework is applied to the contemporary urban agricultural landscape in Seoul, Republic of Korea to show its function. Through a series of reactions that begins with the performance of appearance of the landscape, to its effect on the viewer’s experience of the landscape, to cultural sustainability, the urban agricultural landscape is presented not only as a result but a process in the production of urban landscape. Hence, this study demonstrates not only the significance of design in urban landscape but also the potential embodied in the casual, every-day efforts of the individuals that should be recognized and considered as part of our urban design legacy. By considering the aesthetic experience of urban agricultural landscapes in Seoul, a post-industrial megapolis that hopes to integrate urban agriculture into its socio-political system, this study emphasizes that any common urban agricultural practice is a form of production of landscape. Keywords: Urban Agricultural Landscape, Aesthetic Experience, Seoul, Aesthetic-Moral Judgment, Cultural Sustainability. 1 Ph.D. Student, Interdisciplinary Program in Landscape Architecture, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University. Email: meinung8@snu.ac.kr 2 Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Rural Systems Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Science, Seoul National University. (Corresponding Author) Email: jhannpae@snu.ac.kr 3 This paper is based on my MLA Thesis, “Aesthetic Experience of Urban Agricultural Landscape,” which was submitted in February of 2018. I wish to thank the thesis committee and my advisor for their critiques, recommendations, and support.